GUATEMALA: Reformed Land Reform

To Guatemala's backlands, torn by bitter
years of a Communist-written land reform that set peasant against
landholder, last week came a quietly revolutionary reform of the
reform. Going well beyond the vague notion that landless Indians
"ought" to have some of the big estates held by a few families,
President Carlos Castillo Armas' decree aimed at raising the
agricultural health of all Guatemala.

The reform begun in 1952 by Red-led President Jacobo Arbenz actually
moved 87,000 peasant families onto plots of their own. Some legally
took over uncultivated parts of confiscated estates;...